Leftovers can be great, but they often end up tossed in the garbage. More than 40 percent of all food produced in America is not eaten…That amounts to more than 29 million tons of food waste each year, or enough to fill the Rose Bowl every three days. Nationwide, food scraps make up 17 percent of what we send to landfills. Keeping that in mind there is a lot you can do in your own kitchen to reduce your food waste.

Kitchen composting is a great way to recycle leftovers or old food scraps.So what is composting you ask? It’s simple – it involves taking food or other organic matter, such as leaves, and letting them decompose into soil, which can then be used as a safe and natural fertilizer for indoor plants, outdoor gardening or even farming. Regardless of the space you have (or don’t have) or your budget, there is a wide variety of composting options. You can keep it simple and use large airtight buckets for composting or if you want to compost on a larger scale you can create compost piles outside in your yard.

You can even purchase composting bins for your kitchen. Compost bins look similar to trashcans and all you have to do is discard your food scraps into the bin and the bin does all the work. The decomposition process is sped along and only takes two weeks; once complete all you have to do is empty the compost bin.

So instead of letting your leftovers stink up your trashcan and go to waste why not try composting? There are many advantages to composting food waste instead of creating more garbage. Unlike a trashcan the compost bins have an air filter so you see the results without smelling them. You can compost many things that you can’t put down your disposal like cornhusks and the cores of fruit. You can also compost things that take up a lot of room in your trashcan like coffee grounds and filters, even expired boxes of food from your pantry. Oh and don’t worry the compost bins themselves are very green and energy efficient, utilizing only 10 watts of power.